Palmer Lake—Stone Tools

9,600 years ago, a small group trekked across the North Cascades, then turned north.

The Ice Age had ended. Towering mountains of ice had melted forming vast lakes which sent their waters 300 miles into the Pacific Ocean.

The People needed to avoid the rushing meltwaters, and so they headed north, away from their destructive power.

Some miles up the Cascades, they found Palmer Lake. The lake lay up against Chopaka Mountain. Streams trickled off the mountain watering a rich wetlands below. The people had found a place to survive!

Food and Medicine plants revealed themselves.

Birds and their eggs, mollusks, antlered animals – fed them.

They would survive and endure.

STONE AGE STONE

Beyond Palmer Lake, around the bend in the upper Similkameen River country, a special type of stone was buried in deep beds.

You may know the mineral obsidian. Often black or red, it is extremely sharp, sharp enough to be used for surgery.

The science of it is wiki awesome. Obsidian is a cryptocrystalline silicate, wickedly sharp because of its concoidal structure, a structure which is an essential characteristic of the stone used in Stone Age tool making.

Flint Knapping – using cryptocrystalline rock, is the basis of making stone tools. Flakes are chipped by a precise technolgy. Imagine the handsome and lethal technolgy of mammoth killing Clovis points.

The first settlements of stone age people were at sites where they found tool making stone.

Palmer Lake people would have discovered the quarry at Stirling Creek, a tributary to the upper Similkameen River.

The crystalline stone found there was the earliest known source of stone age rock in the Interior Plateau of the Pacific Northwest.

From Palmer Lake to Flathead Lake, indigenous peoples, with their tools of stone, survived and prospered.

Share this:

Like this:

LikeLoading...

Author: Jere Gillespie

For about a decade, I have wanted to write about the Stone Age. For some of those years, I was an instructor at Nespelem, Washington, on The Confederated Tribes Of The Colville Reservation. One of my jobs was to assemble curriculum for the classes I taught. There I came upon the importance of the Stone Age, especially its happenings right here in the Pacific Northwest at Kettle Falls and up in the Similkameen River Valley. Trek the Stone Age is built on these stories. —Jeré Gillespie
View all posts by Jere Gillespie

One thought on “Palmer Lake—Stone Tools”

What else can we learn about the ancestral use of Palmer Lake? Was it permanent annual site used to go into the north cascades during the summer months? How long was it inhabited? What is known of the stone tool beds of the upper Similkameen River area? Fascinating adventure you are taking us on, Jeré!

Recent Posts

For about a decade, I have wanted to write about the Stone Age. For some of those years, I was an instructor at Nespelem, Washington, on The Confederated Tribes Of The Colville Reservation. One of my jobs was to assemble curriculum for the classes I taught. There I came upon the importance of the Stone Age, especially its happenings right here in the Pacific Northwest. Trek the Stone Age is built on these stories.